Airport route development decision support tool for Cape Town Air Access

Abstract

The connectedness and accessibility of Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) is critical for the economic growth and development of the Western Cape. Cape Town Air Access (CTAA) is responsible for bolstering the long-term growth and sustainability of Cape Town's air access by making decisions on which routes to develop and which existing routes to expand. These decisions are multi-faceted and have wide-ranging impacts on the Air Transport Network (ATN). This study aims to assist the decision-makers at CTAA by creating a model with a network view of their route development decisions. Complex Network Theory (CNT) is used to create the model, which has been applied in many elds to study both the topology and dynamic nature of complex networks. In this study, it is used to model CTIA's ight network and in turn measure its accessibility under various scenarios. Three scenarios are tested: Increasing the capacity on key ights, decreasing the capacity on key ights and introducing new ights to the network. The key ights are identi ed by calculating the vulnerability of airports in the network, which measures the impact that removing an airport has on the accessibility of CTIA. The new ights added to the network are the busiest international airports in each of the 5 strategic countries identi ed by CTAA (Angola, Canada, Ethiopia, Kenya and the United States of America (USA)). Two heuristics are employed in the model to account for the number of seats stolen as a result of an increase in capacity on a direct ight. The Proportionality heuristic `steals' seats from connecting ights with the same proportion as passengers currently using each route to travel to CTIA. The Switching behaviour heuristic uses ight-cost and travel-time data between regions to predict the number of passengers to switch to the direct ight as opposed to using the connecting ight. Three metrics (betweenness centrality, weighted clustering coe cient and e ciency) are used to calculate the accessibility of CTIA when new ights are added to the network, or the capacity on existing ights is increased or decreased. These metrics translate the word de nition of accessibility ( exibility, time-e ciency and cost-e ciency of travel) into a measurable quantity. The research question is: \Can a CNT approach assist decision makers in evaluating the impact of route changes on the Western Cape's air access?". Positive feedback from the company was received regarding the project's usefulness. The project manager described it as \Novel and worthwhile for what we are doing at CTAA", and \The methodology and the way it is structured makes a lot of sense". He also gave constructive criticism regarding the results of the analysis, which need to be more suitable for audiences such as politicians and the CTAA steering committee. Based on the results of the simulations, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and Franz Josef Strauss Airport in Munich should be expanded. This challenges the current thinking at CTAA which focuses on developing and expanding smaller routes. In terms of developing new direct ights, the results suggest that Miami International, Edmonton International and John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) should be developed.